Indian HIV patients are said to live a better life compared to their US counterparts.
Recent studies conducted by the Indian scientists from Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) at Bangalore and National Brain Research Centre (NBRC), at Delhi, have shown that HIV does not cause dementia in India due to genetic change.“The HIV virus are classified into various sub type and virus found in Indians are Subtype C, which is not prone to dementia because the protein Tat that effects the brain cell undergoes a genetic change in India resulting in lack of dementia,” said Dr.Ranga Uday Kumar, team leader of study at JNCASR.
He further added that with the difference in subtype, the main purpose of the study was to find out whether there are similar differences between the pathogens, but due to absence of animal model for experimentation in India we had to depend solely on the cell culture to solve the mystery.
And Dr. Pankaj Seth at NBRC has conducted the study on the brain of dead foetus to examine the effect of HIV on the neuron informed Dr. Kumar.
India has roughly 2.5 million people infected with HIV, less than half the number of cases that previous studies estimated.
An earlier U.N. study had estimated 5.7 million HIV cases, which would have been the highest total in the world.
But as per the latest available data, India, which has a population of 1.1 billion, has fewer HIV cases than South Africa and Nigeria.
Source-ANI
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